A curated collection of wine reviews from the top wine writers in America. Every day, we highlight the best wines available in America. From the staff at the National Wine School in California.
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
When you visit Alentejo’s Cortes de Cima (as I did late in 2019 on a media jaunt), you realize that their geese are more than just “a loud alarm system” (as Winemaking Director Hamilton Reis put it).
Those geese also eat vineyard pests, like slugs and snails. That’s not the only traditional thing that Cortes de Cima is into employing, as they also (in true Alentejo style) utilize various sizes of clay amphorae during winemaking, which results in about 16-18% evaporation that naturally concentrates the wines aged therein.
That’s about as far as the tradition goes here, however. Though that makes sense when you consider that Cortes de Cima is owned by a Danish guy with a Californian wife who met in Malaysia and, during a sailing trip, got waylaid in Portugal for repairs in the 1980s and fell in love with the place so hard that they decided to buy an estate and plant vines there.
As for those clay pots, Cortes de Cima prefers them unlined/in-pitched. “In the end, I’m just helping to get the raw materials from the vines to the wines. [The grapes] are just envelopes, the message is the place where they are growing. You should not ice the cake if the cake doesn’t need icing” explained Reis. And these cakes absolutely don’t need icing, folks…
In some ways, this white blend (of Alvarinho, Verdelho, and Sauvignon Blanc) is one of the more traditional products of Cortes de Cima’s production. When they were founded, Alentejo was better known for white wines than for its now well-regarded powerhouse reds. Analysis with the help of UC Davis showed at the time that reds would fare better (“the other producers said we were crazy,” noted Reis). Herbal, edgy, citric, refreshing, and very, very tasty, there is lovely exotic fruit action here. That nice combo of freshness and ripeness comes courtesy of coastal area vines, which see plenty of the famous Alentejo sunlight, but cool down faster and have a longer ripening curve than their more inland cousins.
A somewhat unlikely mix of Aragonez, Syrah, Touriga Nacional, and Petit Verdot, aged in 225L French oak with un-toasted heads, this red has impeccable balance for the money. Silky, deep, juicy, plummy, mineral, spicy (think pepper and licorice), smoky, and poised, there persistent and consistent layers of black fruits and a good amount of structure, too. Quite an achievement for under $25.
During maturation, this blend (Aragonez, Syrah, Touriga NAcional, and Trincadeira) moves from clay pots to smaller jars for preservation. The process imbues it with character and texture, balancing fullness with hints of violets, clay, and dried herbs, and flavors of red and black cherries and plums. Basically, most people will go ga-ga for stuff like this (geeks and non-geeks alike).
Their oldest Syrah plantings (on calcareous soils), aged in 50% new French oak… so, built to be the prestige line. And it worked; only made in exceptional vintages, this red’s success forced the Denominação de Origem Controlada to allow Syrah in the region’s labeling. Juicy, deep, dark, meaty, structured, and downright severe, this is powerful, leathery, and spicy stuff. Going on six years, it’s not even at middle age yet.
An Aragonez base, with additions of Syrah, Touriga Nacional, and Tinta Franca, this is your red Iberian wine if you’re into complex aromatics. Tobacco, dried flowers, cherries, smoke, meat, pepper, cigar, cedar, balsamic, dried herbs, mint… and that’s really just scratching the surface. The palate is deep and almost profound, as well as being both savory and fresh, large and balanced, concentrated and spicy. In fact, it seems to stay spicy o the finish for about… forever…
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
Thibaut Decoster and wife Magali (a Bordeaux native) knew basically nothing about farming and winemaking. No prior experience working the land. No family in the industry. So naturally they now own four wineries across twenty-eight hectares of vineyards in Bordeaux.
Thibaut and Magali Decoster (image: vins-saint-emilion.com)
“My dream was to be a farmer,” Thibaut Decoster told me during a one-on-one virtual video tasting of some of his brands’ 2016 releases. While in Paris (where Magali was working in sports marketing), the Decosters studied the wine business before jumping in with purchases, with Thibaut subsequently doing harvest and cellar-rat work to get hand-on experience in Bordeaux. Thibaut himself has never really had any other job; being a student before, his journey to becoming a vintner was “straight after diploma” as he put it.
The Decosters settled on Saint-Emilion, as that happened to be the Bordeaux region that made up his first formative tasting experience. As you’ll see below, the couple are quick studies…
This Merlot (with a bit of Cabernet Franc) is grown on the south-facing clay and limestone hills, resulting in what Thibaut calls “a sunny wine.” He described the 2016 harvest season in general as “fantastic,” with little pressure demanding when to pick. While this one is fresh for sure, it is, indeed, showing its sunny side: open, fruity, mineral, plummy, full of red currants, black olives, and dark, dried herbal spices. It’s a modern, showy Bordeaux red, with plenty of power and heft on the back-end, but absolutely ready for some steak pairing right now.
Another Merlot and Cab Franc mix, from 40-year-old vines, but this time grown on gravelly soils with ferruginous sand and clay, right on the border with Pomerol. Thibaut called this one “more feminine and charming” and was going for a more “delicate style.” Red fruits abound, as do some wonderful spice notes, including toast, herbs, and dried flowers. it’s poised, beautifully integrated, and almost dangerously easy to like. Things get deeper and more plummy on the palate, but the balance never waivers.
This spot (where the Decosters now happen to live) forms a bit of a plateau around the village of limestone and clay, where 30-year-old Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Cabernet Sauvignon vines provide the raw materials for this release. Less sunny and cooler than the vineyard sites for the previous two wines above, with less drainage, a more Old World style Bordeaux red results: earthy, mineral, smoky, and full of fresh and dried herbal aromas. The fruits are darker, and the composition of elements feels a bit more complex, deeper, and more focused. Mineral and leathery throughout, this one will need time to develop in bottle (warranting return trips).
I’ll start with the most important bit of advice that I can give on organizing a virtual wine tasting, and work backwards into the specifics from there: chill out, folks. If you’re worrying about how to pull off a virtual wine tasting, you’re already overthinking it. The wine market is already way ahead of you on this, and has done most of the heavy-lifting for you. It has never been easier (or cheaper) to pull off a wine tasting without actually leaving your house. Seriously, relax. Focus on learning and having fun, the rest of it really is just small stuff, not to be sweated too much. I’ve done so many of these virtual tastings during Shelter-in-Place (most of them organized directly for media folks like me), and none of them have been even remotely (ha-ha!) difficult. In fact, the most trying aspect is remembering when and how to mute/unmute yourself during the video call.
Option #1: Leave the heavy lifting to someone else
If you’re less inclined to bother with specifics, and are ok with spending more of your hard-earned cash in exchange for convenience, you can simply organize some like-minded friends and all sign up for one of the ever-increasing virtual tasting opportunities being offered by wineries and wine brands directly. You sign-up, pay, and they effectively handle the rest, sending you the wines, organizing the video chat, and walking you through a tasting. The downside is that you’re likely limited to only that brand’s wines, and will have to pay a bit more for their time. But otherwise, there’s very little downside to this fun and buzz-inducing experience (and they only thing you have to worry about is dragging your butt to bed later if you’ve over-indulged).
Option #2: Do it yourself
Pick a theme, and get The Guide
This is a lot easier than it at first might sound. You’ll want to pick a theme for your tasting and have a guide as to how to organize the lineup of wines in terms of tasting order and general set-up. Somewhat shamelessly, I’ll recommend that you pick up my book, which has done a lot of the hard work in choosing wines for you, with 30 themed tastings in it (all indexed – hey, it’s an inexpensive way to get a serious head-start there!). Additionally, the entire 5th chapter deals exclusively with how to plan and organize your own wine tastings. When going virtual, you need only have to have all of the participants roughly follow the same rules (importantly, the tasting order). Worried about the vocabulary you might have to tap into during the actual tasting? Well, I’ve got a book for that, too. The point is, you have a lot of resources to assist with this.
Get the wines
The best way to get the same wines to everyone? Give everyone the same shopping list, and have them check a website such as Wine Searcher to find the best combination of retailers and prices. Many will deliver directly to your door, depending on where you live; it doesn’t get much easier than that.
Get connected
Sign up for a video meeting service, and organize the date/time for your tasting session. In 2020, you will almost certainly be using Zoom, the video service that has just about cornered the virtual meeting market during Cornavirus. If you’re one of the 20 or so people who’ve yet to use, there are no shortage of handy primers available online for how to set it up and get started. As a matter of perspective, during her first ever Zoom call my mother (in her 70s), without any assistance, went from not understanding how to start her video feed during a multi-person Zoom call to effectively utilizing her phone for the video stream and her laptop for the audio stream separately, to make up for the limited bandwidth provided by her aging DSL connection. You’ll be fine.
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
Hope Estate 2015 “The Ripper” Shiraz Hailing from Western Australia, this will give you the drunken power of seven wombats. Eh. Actually, this is a white-pepper driven beauty with clear […]
Usually, the 1WD wine sample pool is, as my daughter likes to describe my cooking, “adequate.”
What I mean is, most of the wine samples that I receive are pretty good, if not get-you-all-diddy-like exciting; occasionally I get a sample that’s an utter dud, and occasionally I pop open a sample that’s delightfully surprising.
Rarely, I receive a sample that blows my cotton socks off. And never have I received samples that earned an “A+” rating – my top-of-the-line critical mark, reserved only for wines that, in my opinion, are not only nearly perfect, but reset the bar of what wine lovers can expect from the combination of style/grapes/region upon which they are based.
I recently received a wine in the sample pool that hits that lofty mark – something that’s never happened in my decade-plus of receiving wine samples. In fact, I just received two of them. And they’re from the same f*cking producer…
Gifted with what was arguably the greatest vintage in Livermore in at least a decade, Mirassou swung for the fences for the 2017 releases of his top-tier Lineage Collection reds. He ended up hitting a grand slam.
The two wines you will read about below are seamless. Not only are they as near to perfect “New World” Cabernet Sauvignon expression as you’re likely to come across, they are some of the best expressions of Bordeaux-styled reds that have come out of all of California in the last ten years. These set a new high bar for what can be achieved in Livermore Valley, and represent a sort of seminal pivot point for the region.
About one-quarter of this 100% Cabernet’s fruit comes from Mirassou’s favorite farming spot, the Ghielmetti Vineyard. Most of it is sourced from Home Ranch Vineyard, and the remainder from Sachau Vineyard. These are all within roughly 4-5 miles of one another, and so all benefited from similar 2017 vintage magic: a rainy start that morphed into perfect and dry conditions in August and September. This red represents what must have been a Herculean effort of sorting through over 120 barrels to whittle the selection down to eight (producing just under 2000 bottles total).
In a word, this Cab is exceptional. Silky on entry, moving to a firm grip that never becomes abrasive. Vanilla, cedar, dried herbs, balsamic, graphite, Crème de Mure, ripe plums of several stripes, blackcurrant, truffles – it’s the whole damned Cabernet package. It moves powerfully but gracefully and evenly in the mouth, almost with a sentient sense of purpose, guided by a fine line of acidity and minerality, and concludes with an epic finish that lasts several minutes. Drinking this gave me goosebumps at several separate, distinct moments. It could go for a decade in the bottle. Basically, it’s a triumph.
A blend in every sense: of six different vineyards (including Mirassou’s preferred target, Ghielmetti), three different varieties (75% Cabernet Sauvignon, with the remainder a ix of Merlot and Cabernet Franc), and new (60%) and used French oak barrels (from three different coopers), producing a bit over over 4,000 bottles total.
This Lineage is the more modernly styled, larger big brother to its slightly more feminine sister, The Premier. Everything about this red feels massive and substantial at first: the oak, the incredibly deep black fruits, the dark spiciness, the fleshiness, the black olive savoriness, the ripe and rich red fruit core. The tannins, while also substantial and serious, are long and silky. This is a steakhouse dinner red in all of the best ways, an absolute powerhouse meant to be expressive and to dominate most of your senses from the get-go. Complex, assertive, and not fooling around, all of the pieces are there and are clearly going to fit together like a 2000-piece puzzle at some point, but only on the wine’s terms, when it’s damned good and ready. It’s a gorgeous, muscular achievement that won’t fully come together for fifteen or more years.
Hat’s off to Mirassou; I don’t think that Livermore is ever going to be quite the same after this.
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
According to general manager and oenologist Pedro Ribeiro, Herdade do Rocim has “probably the most expensive amphorae in the world.”
Rocim sent clay from their ancient vats – a staple of aging wine in Alentejo for centuries – to a university in Montpelier for analysis, in order to create newer amphorae that had the same porosity as French oak barrels. these are the things you can afford to do, I suppose, when you are part of three estates (the others being in Lisbon and the Douro, with another joint venture in Vinho Verde) and produce upwards of one million bottles of wine per annum.
Rarely do the modern and the traditional meet quite as abruptly as they do in Rocim’s Vidiguiera winery, where those 250+-year-old clay pots – many larger than a full-gorwn adult (“you need a very thin guy to go in and scrub” to clean them, warned Riberio when I visited Rocim last year as part of a media tour) – are housed in a spartan, state-of-the-art winemaking facility.
To top off the traditional feels, a layer of olive oil is used to, well, top off the talha clay vats in order to protect aging wines from oxidation, with many of the wines made using wild yeasts, and receiving minimal sulfite additions (“my idea,” Riberio mused, “is not to mask the wines”). Thankfully, these are far more than marketing gimmicks, as the results of Rocim’s efforts are well worth the search for the curious (and thirsty)…
The sites from which Rocim’s branco (a blend primarily of Anton Vaz and Arinto) are sourced are granitic and hilly, trapping cooler, humid winds, helping to preserve freshness in the grapes. Yeasty and perfumed, there’s nice (and delicious) interplay here between the broad, peachy fruit and the chalky, toasty, mineral palate.
This blend of Verdelho, Alvarinho, and Viosinho sees six months of aging in clay after fermentation in both stainless steel and small amphorae. White peach, lemon peel, white flowers, toast, brioche, apricots, all on top of a mineral and creamy mouthfeel… this is at times geeky, serious, and downright tasty.
A single vineyard white, from Anton Vaz vines up to 75 years old, this is powerful, concentrated stuff aged in large, older barrels. Stone fruits, citrus, jasmine, peaches, and toast… but don’t let the big bones fool you, it’s also got plenty of liveliness to counterbalance its softer edges.
Rocim’s Pedro Ribeiro
2018 Herdade do Rocim “Fresh from Amphora” Tinto (Alentejo, $25)
A joint venture with Nieport, packaged in 1L bottles, crafted with low amounts of sulfites, and specifically made to be lower in abv (11.5%$!), this is the first vintage of this Trincadeira and Moreto blend. Fresh, peppery, fun, and full of earthy red berry goodness, Hipster somms everywhere can rejoice (get your BTG orders in now, folks!).
This blend of several Portuguese red grapes delivers serious bang for the buck. A bit of wood and drier, riper red and blue fruit flavors signal a wine meant for the crowds, but there’s more balance, texture, freshness, and depth (not to mention excellent tannin management) than you’d otherwise expect to find in a wine at this price point.
100% organic Alicante Bouschet, this deep garnet delight is chock full of sweet tobacco and ripe plum action, black cherry flavors, and a chewy mouthfeel that delivers purity and freshness. A bit of an attempt at a natural wine, though Ribeiro delivered several caveats when pouring it. “There’s so much bullshit and so many bad wines in the Natural wine movement,” he lamented. “If it was God’s will, it would be vinegar.” Thankfully, Rocim manages to stave off the gods’ wrath (at least for now).
Foot-trodden Alicante Bouschet and Trincadeira make up this red, which spends sixteen months in clay. While not complex, it’s long AF, with pure, chewy, and fresh cherry flavors and notes of minerals and spices. Textural enough for the nerds, tasty enough for the masses.
Another foot-trodden Alicante Bouschet and Trincadeira mashup, this time from a 75-year-old vineyard, and aged in large oak vats. This might be Rocim’s most modernly appointed red, and it’s downright sexy, with ripe black cherry fruit flavors, sweet tobacco aromas, and ample spiciness. While powerful, and sleek, it still manages to maintain a sense of character and playful deviousness.
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes in a “mini-review” format.
They are meant to be quirky, fun, and (mostly) easily-digestible reviews of (mostly) currently available wines (click here for the skinny on how to read them), and are presented links to help you find them, so that you can try them out for yourself. Cheers!
